Stamford school board candidates square off for the first time

By Wynne Parry, Staff Writer

Published 9:27 pm, Friday, October 16, 2009

STAMFORD -- Two of the five Board of Education candidates began Thursday's debate with lists of hypothetical childrens' names.

"Folks, there is nothing more urgent than getting all of our kids ready for global competition," said Republican Fred Pierre-Louis. "Now we have to define all students. My definition of all students include names like Shaika, Jose, John."

Republican Lorraine Olson is a school nurse and former teacher. Democrat Pauline Rauh noted that as a longtime educator in Stamford she had worked with many in the audience and their children. Republican Jerry Pia is running to return to the school board, where he served from 1980 to 1998.

Their discussion in front of a substantial audience -- about a third of which consisted of teachers -- took place at the district's most sought-after magnet school, Westover Elementary. So not surprisingly, moderator Gary Klein said a number of questions from the audience were about the role of magnet schools. While most candidates favored expanding them, Rauh, who said she had been involved in magnet programs at Toquam and Scofield and had written Westover's, was the most ambitious.

"If I could have my dream, it would be that all the schools in Stamford would be schools of choice," she said. "Ideally, we would have the opportunity to choose our neighborhood school or a school of choice."

Changes to Westover's enrollment sparked some concerns for Pavla Levin, the mother of two students there. This year, Westover's attendance zone widened as part of redistricting, and it was the only school of choice under federal accountability law, meaning some students from schools with poor test scores could transfer to it. New students are now being admitted to its third grade.

"The broken schools are being fixed at the expense of Westover," she said. Levin also said she feared the curriculum is being "dumbed down."

The issue of redistricting, which required some elementary students to change schools this fall, reappeared with a question about whether the board should revisit its rule that every school should have a socio-economic balance equal to 10 percent of the district's.

Rauh and Olson both favored relaxing the standard, while the others supported keeping it.

"It is probably more painful for us as adults. Children adapt," Chapman-Taylor said.

With a painful budget season behind the school board, and another likely on the way, the relationship between the school board and the Board of Finance, which has the power to cut the school budget, was also an issue.

"They have to trust you are bringing a budget they can go out and defend," he said of the finance board.

Many questions came in regarding ability grouping, Klein said. A middle school reform initiative which has begun in sixth grade has reduced the number of ability groups from as many as five down to two, meaning children of a wider range of abilities share an academic classroom.

"I believe we need to have instructional grouping in skill areas," Rauh said. "The remainder of the day should be in a heterogeneous (setting)."

This type of grouping refers to giving students a solid block of time to work on a specific skill, like mixed fractions. It is fluid and flexible, she clarified later.

Chapman-Taylor and Pierre-Louis both supported the initiative and stood against ability grouping, or, as they referred to it, tracking.

"You start grouping, you start having dumb, dumber, smarter," Chapman-Taylor said. "It's not the way to go in this new economy."

Pierre-Louis, a high school chemistry teacher outside the district, described a pilot project he conducted as part of research for his doctorate at the University of Hartford. Twenty students, who would be considered underachieving, were placed in college prep level courses and, several months later, identified themselves that way, rather than as underachieving.

"The stigma of keeping kids in tracks has got to stop," he said.

Olson noted that heterogeneous grouping has been successful at Scofield Magnet Middle school, but that "the teachers at Scofield have been doing this kind of program since its inception. Teachers at other schools have not had this kind of training."

Pia said that the reforms were too new to be evaluated. Instead, he focused on preparing students for life after graduation, which does not include college for everyone.

"One of the biggest problems that happened in Stamford is Wright Tech closed," he said. "We need to have a program that fits everybody in the city of Stamford."

Kindergarten, first and second grade are also crucial, he said.

Staff Writer Wynne Parry can be reached at 203-964-2263 or wynne.parry@scni.com.